Sometime, Somewhere
by llethe
Summary: The smells of old, wet wood, the salty musk of the sea, and blood.


Disclaimer: I do not own _Hawaii 5-0._

Summary: The smells of old, wet wood, the salty musk of the sea, and blood.

Warnings: Graphic character death, dark dark darkity dark, ambiguity. S1 AU.  
><span>Rating<span>: PG-13  
><span>Spoilers<span>: None.

Characters: Steve, Mary, Danny.

Author's Note: I wrote most of this in Summer 2011, long before season two, and have been tinkering with it ever since. There is no Lori or Joe, which is why I think of it as an AU.

**Sometime, Somewhere  
>by llethe<strong>

100. Count

The first time Steve killed, nothing inside of himself changed. Ten years and hundreds of bodies later, he came back to the Island and felt like he was visiting his own grave.

With Mary, he felt like a ghost. She treated him like they were sixteen and twelve again. She didn't know what he'd lost on the other side or what he'd brought home with him. At the least, he thought it would be enough to protect her. He was wrong.

Sometime, somewhere, he loses count of the bodies, and the blood on his hands becomes invisible. But not hers.

200. Lose

Against the blue sky, Mary was in hi-def, everything but her a blur. Days old mascara streaked down her cheeks, almost lost in the bruises and gashes. Her hands were bound behind her back, her mouth duct taped. A cinderblock was chained to her feet.

The handcuffs gave. He slammed a fist into a neck and grabbed a discarded 9mm. He shot and killed the man next to Mary and then two others.

Mary's eyes went wide, a split second before electricity seared through him. A heavy boot came down on his right hand. The ass end of a rifle slammed into the back of his head. A crushing pressure against his mid-back kept him floored, and cool metal pressed into the back of his neck.

He focused on the smells of old, wet wood, the salty musk of the sea, and blood. It was -

"Not so rough. There's something he needs to see."

- enough for him to fight against the darkness and its claustrophobic dread, fear, and panic. There was no way out.

He saw her go over. He heard the splash. That easy.

"And then there was one, Steve. Just you."

Sometime, somewhere, he loses everything.

300. Dream

The hallway twirled. A knife spun in his head. His bones, blood, and muscles strained against his skin. There was no safe ground.

An echo cautioned him. He let himself be lead through the twirling hallway, and he didn't ponder how every step felt like he was jumping out of a plane, or how every word spun that fucking knife more slowly.

He thought of how survival trumped family. Like when he killed Hesse's brother to save his own life. Like when he made it back to shore without killing Wo Fat. Like how he could save everyone but the ones who mattered.

The echo cautioned him again. The twirling hallways were gone. Streetlamps blurred into the night, and through the whirls and swirls of trees and asphalt and houses, he recognized his street.

He stepped miles – Christ, _miles_– from the Camaro to the sidewalk. There was pain just about everywhere, but it, too, was miles away, except for the knife in his head.

The echo (_Danny_. It was _Danny._) said something else, had him by the arms, gently. There was a staircase in front of him and Danny in front of him, saying things earnestly, with eyes like tornadoes and storm clouds. He let Danny guide him away from the stairs, and he didn't understand, but he didn't care to.

There was something else, more important, that kept floating in and out of his grasp.

He was on the couch, warm and covered, the room twirling and whirling a bit, the pain further away. The knife didn't spin. Instead, there were cinderblocks on his eyelids, dragging him deeper and deeper and deeper, maybe to where there were answers and chances and no mistakes and no lost years and a way to do everything right again.

Sometime, somewhere, he dreams.

400. Wish

Something like weeks passed since that day. Her body was gone. His team wanted a memorial service. He wanted something better.

Through the night, he squared away the remnants of his family. He thought he would feel more except idle worry that Williams, Kelly, or Kalakaua would catch him on their terms. But his breath didn't catch when he found old items that he last remembered from childhood, and he didn't feel guilt when he buried family photos at the bottom of boxes. By morning, the house was bare except for furniture he didn't care to move or keep, boxes stacked neatly in the entryway.

He didn't take one last look at the shore, where he'd spent so many nights as a teenager. He didn't stop to regret or reconsider, not even after he handed the keys to the Marquis to its new owner, or when he dropped the keys to the house in the realtor's drop box. Done deals.

One way or another, he'd never be back for any of it.

He stacked the boxes of his parent's lives and a childhood he could barely remember in the back lot of the Goodwill off Waialae. He dumped his disassembled cell phone in three trash cans between there and the moving company. He took a cab the tiny but congested distance to Honolulu International, a carry on to his name. He cleared security with just over an hour until his flight boarded.

Just over an hour to freeze, come to his senses, regret. Just over an hour for them to find him and spew all the platitudes in the world, so maybe he would change his mind. "You're letting him win," they'd say, as if there was anything else left to lose. "We can do this together," they'd say, as if there was any part of him that wanted them to be part of it_._

He was crossing onto the jetway when he heard his name, the shout nearly lost in the crowd of people in the terminal. He never really expected less of them.

He didn't turn. He didn't hesitate. He didn't stop. He heard his name, again and again, and maybe he didn't even breathe until the plane angled into the sky and all he could see was the warm blue of the North Pacific between spikes of clouds.

Sometime, somewhere, he wishes he hadn't made it back.

500. Breathe

Arms spread wide. Legs bent at the knees, feet dangling toward the sea bed. Chin aimed to the night sky.

One more breath. One more. And another.

The coarse unevenness of those breaths were loud in his ears. He struggled to control every breath against the bullet in his chest, even as his body screamed and burned for more air, as if it would make death less of a conclusion.

Every time he faltered, he lost balance and went under. Wo Fat had killed him that night, but he was not going to die drowning. For her.

One more breath. One more. And another.

His eyelids were heavy: they slipped closed and dragged open. If he kept them closed, he'd be gone. When he kept them open, the stars blurred and the sky blended with the sea, and he wasn't sure if he was up or down, dead or alive, in the ocean or in the sky.

One more breath. One more. And an—

A burst of coughs crackled through his veneer of control. Cool water slipped over his face, and he slithered under the water for a terrifying moment. When he came back up, the black sky had melted into the black horizon, and he could barely – just _barely_– catch enough of a breath to quell adrenaline-spiked panic that he wasn't supposed to feel.

His body knew the ocean, memories borne of years of training and years of ops burned into his muscles, and he didn't need to see the water to reorient himself.  
>Arms spread wide; legs bent at the knees; feet limp and dangling toward the sea bed; chin aimed to the sky. As much as it burned, as much as it defied his instincts to curl in on himself, he counted on the water that had buried Wo Fat to carry him.<p>

One more breath. One more. And another.

He didn't know if his eyes were open or closed.

One more breath. One more.

He didn't know.

One more breath.

A light blinded him. The wind picked up. The sound of the waves disappeared, swallowed by something louder. Strong, warm arms wrapped around him, tight as can be. A tinny male voice sounded like it was miles away, words collapsing together without making any sense at all.

Something inside of him clicked. He recognized the sounds that came from above: the forceful, rhythmic displacement of air, and the humming grind of an engine. He couldn't think of the word for it, but he knew what it was. He knew what _this_was.

He was lifted into the air, staggered by North Pacific wind that shouldn't have felt as cold as it did. He couldn't stop himself from coughing, and he couldn't breathe.

One more. One more. One more.

An agonizing pressure pushed against his chest. He felt a flash of icy warmth, and the blackness became encroachingly darker.

The world tilted vertical. Voices coalesced into a mass of rushing, white sound.

Sometime, somewhere, he keeps breathing.

-end

llethe / February, 2012


End file.
